"Guess What? I'm Not a Virgin Anymore!"

One year ago, I did something I thought I'd never do: I had premarital sex. It happened a few months after I'd written an essay in these very pages declaring, "Yes, I'm a 27-Year-Old Virgin."

The reason I waited until the age of 28 to lose my virginity is that I was raised Mormon, and sex (or anything too stimulating) before marriage is a serious sin. For Mormons, first base is conversation, second base is holding hands and third base is kissing sitting up. By the age of 26, the furthest I'd gone was boob touching—and I felt so guilty I confessed it in detail to my bishop.

My whole life I had done my best to uphold those rigid tenets—I believed obedience would get me what I thought I wanted: a temple marriage to another Mormon. I came close: I finally met a Mormon guy, and we connected so much I moved to Utah for him. But as soon as I got there and stood face-to-face with the life I'd dreamed of, I was miserable. I had stopped pursuing my career. I had left the city I loved. I felt like my life was about to end rather than begin. I told my boyfriend how I felt, and we broke up. I went back to New York City, wrote the Glamour piece and continued to date—albeit not very successfully.

I thought it would help to go public about my virginity in a magazine; it ended up turning me into a reluctant spokesperson for abstinence. There were perks—the supportive e-mails I got from strangers were moving—but because I was so out there about it, Google soon became my biggest cock block. Guys would look me up and just think, No way. And to be honest, I had grown used to the fascination, disgust and confusion my virginity elicited in men.

A few months later, I went to a music video shoot. Everyone was wearing crazy costumes, and amid twentysomethings dressed as creepy clowns and goth teenagers, I spotted a handsome guy sporting a hipster mustache and an old-man sweater. I approached him and asked if he was dressed as a pedophile. It turned out he was a friend of a friend, just watching for kicks. It wasn't a costume.

We shared a subway ride home, and before we parted, he turned and said, "Can I get your number for posterity?"

"Your future children want my phone number?" I answered, handing it to him.

Mike* called the next day to ask me out. With him, it was easy. No overanalyzing text messages or fretting over unreturned phone calls. Mike liked me and wasn't afraid to show it. After years of dating men scared of doing anything that might mislead me into thinking we were serious, Mike was a breath of fresh air.

We spent the next three weeks going to shows, exploring Brooklyn and making out furiously. (He nicknamed me Space Camp, because when we made out, it was like the simulated version of sex—all the fun without ever getting there.)

Because Mike put my needs first, I knew I could trust him. This made me feel safe opening up to him in ways I never had to anyone else—especially when it came to sex. At first my religious guilt was unbearable. We'd go to second base, and I'd enjoy it, but the next day I'd freak out and tell him we had to stop dating. This didn't faze him. His response was simply "We don't have to break up. We'll just go as far as you want to."

I started toying with the idea of having sex. But it felt like too big a leap. What would my parents think when I told them? Would I get excommunicated? And I was still getting e-mails every day from people congratulating me on my virginity, not to mention interview requests from reporters wanting to talk about my abstinence. It was too much to handle. I'd climbed up the high dive, but now I was too scared to jump.

Then one morning, in the most uneventful way possible, it happened. Mike had spent the night and needed to get up earlier than usual. I didn't want him to leave, so I started kissing him, trying to get him to stay. Before either of us really knew what was happening, we were having sex.

Wait. That's a lie. I did know what was happening. What I mean to say is that before I let myself think of all the reasons not to, I followed my instincts and we had sex. And how was it? Well, I'd always thought sex would be entirely new—like outer space or the great beyond. It actually felt a lot like all the other stuff we'd already been doing, just more painful. Only one moment felt different: When I looked into Mike's eyes, it scared me. I wasn't sure if I was ready to be that close to someone. Only now I was.

When it was done, I got very quiet. I suddenly felt like I'd crossed this huge threshold when all I'd meant to do was cross the street. "Don't think about it, don't think about it," I repeated to myself.

"Are you OK?" Mike asked.

"Yeah, I just need to take the dog out," I said, before fleeing.

As I hurried down the block, I told myself that nothing about me had really changed. I'd had sex; it wasn't that big a deal. Then I rounded a corner and came to a newsstand where I saw a magazine I'd done an interview for. It featured a girl wearing a metal chastity belt and the cover line The only living virgin in New York. Whoever says God doesn't have a sense of humor is wrong.

And then it really hit me: I wasn't a virgin anymore. That part of my identity was gone, and I had to face the fact that, at 28, I had no idea who I was. Tears welled up in my eyes, and a teenage memory, one I'd almost forgotten, popped into my head: A friend of mine, Ellen, a beautiful Mormon girl, had married another Mormon in the Seattle temple. After their first dance, she walked over to me and gave me a hug, looking happier than I'd ever thought possible. "How do you feel?" I asked her. "It was worth the wait," she said. "It was worth the wait. —Ellen Morehouse," I wrote in my journal that night years ago.

In the chilly Manhattan air, remembering Ellen's words, I thought, I will never know what it feels like to give myself to one person. But then a second thought occurred to me: What wait?! She got married when she was 18. She waited maybe two years to have sex. I waited as long as I possibly could, and then I made a choice.

When I got back to the apartment, Mike was waiting for me. He told me he'd canceled his appointments so we could spend the day together. I felt raw, giddy and disappointed in myself. "I'm never going to have sex again," I swore. That afternoon, we did it again. We spent the next week that way. We're never going to do that again, I would think, except this one last time, just to be certain I know what it feels like. Thankfully, sex quickly went from slightly uncomfortable to pure pleasure.

Four months in, it was my best friend, Alison, who snapped me out of this cycle. When she quizzed me about Mike, I told her the truth: that I was happy but didn't think he was the man I wanted to marry. I also confided that I was a week late and that, although I was on birth control, I was worried about it.

Alison sprang into action, making me take a pregnancy test. As I waited for the results, I thought about the life I want and about the power my everyday actions have to screw that future up. As a virgin, I'd waited for marriage because I was hoping my dream life would eventually come. But after a certain point, I'd needed to put my day-to-day life ahead of that fantasy. Now I was doing the opposite: living in the moment without regard for the future, which was equally dangerous. God bless that blue minus sign; I broke up with Mike two days later.

I've slept with three guys total now. Number two taught me a lesson in chemistry: I knew immediately afterward that I didn't want to have sex with him again, and never did. I was with number three for four months; even with him, I felt like a sex newbie.

I'm still trying to process all the postcoital emotions, but what I have learned is that in some ways sex is not that big a deal and a very big deal all at once. That's probably obvious to some of you, but it was a shock to me, even as a 28-year-old experienced dater.

One big-deal outcome: Sex has helped me become more comfortable with my body. (I used to be overweight and had to go through skin-removal surgery, so this is no small thing.) One weekend when Mike and I were driving upstate after dark, we passed an old oak tree with a swing resting on the edge of a big empty field. We decided to pull over, put blankets out and lie underneath the stars. One thing led to another, and after we had sex, I ran over to the swing, stark naked. It was the most uninhibited I'd ever felt, swinging back and forth. Naked and glowing in the moonlight, I felt like I was flying.

At its best, sex feels like the meaning of life. Being underneath the sheets with someone and gazing into their eyes—that's definitely worth living for. But here's the trick: No matter how good it feels, sex doesn't complete me the way I hoped it would. It's exciting and relaxing, but it can't magically fix my problems. If I'm avoiding my spiritual life, putting off work or skipping going to the gym, sex won't solve that. I need to do that.

I thought that if I had sex, it'd be the point of no return: I'd stop being Mormon, I'd lose the support of my parents and I'd become a different person. And though I'm still struggling with my faith (and hadn't told my parents the news before publishing this essay forced me to!), I'm the same Elna I've always been. Now I realize that those were just things I made up to scare myself, to keep me from having to deal with the real questions of what was happening in my life. I don't regret losing my virginity, but I also don't regret waiting. I know now that it's a very personal journey, and when I get scared or overwhelmed, I imagine being on that swing, and I push forward.